


A Thunder Sent to Bring

by atouchofyou



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 17:31:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atouchofyou/pseuds/atouchofyou
Summary: God plays his trump card, and maybe Dean learns something about family and unconditional love. A hazy dream of one direction season nine could have gone, grown out of trying to answer “how could Supernatural have more and better female characters?”





	A Thunder Sent to Bring

Where she walks, it is mist and shadow. The sun is absent; she alone knows where it is. She walks and her heels tap out on the asphalt. They are here, she knows, even if little brother has tried to hide them. He can hide nothing from her, not now.

When she speaks, it is with power and light. _Where is my brother_ she asks. _Where is Castiel_ she demands. They don't know and this frustrates her.

“Lady, who _are_ you?” The elder one asks. He is defiant, protective. The believer, the righteous man, who turns his back on it all. He should know more fear.

_The Watcher_ , she tells him. _I was First and I will be Last. Humans have called me Death, but that is only a limited understanding._

He sees beyond the form then, his eye well-trained. Underneath the heels and skirt and coiled bun, something far greater lies. He takes a step back, easing into a defensive posture, as if he could stop her if she wanted to pull his marked bones from his chest.

“You got a name, Watcher?” The muscle in his jaw flexes and she knows a kinship with him, the language of the older sibling, the protection of someone to the point of death.

_Azreal,_ she says. Angel of the Lord she does not say, for it is written in their eyes, the understanding.

There is no trust, only a begrudging acknowledgment of the same goal, and so they begin to work together.

 

She completely unnerves him. Not that he'd ever admit it, but she is not the same as the other angels they've met and it leaves him unsettled. Her voice rings with some strange sonorous quality and he'd never admit that, either, because Sam would never let it go that he that knows a word like “sonorous.” But he does know it and he uses it because it fits. She's strange and it isn't just the voice. Her movements don't work right, like she's never been in a vessel before. She moves beyond what a normal woman could endure, those heels alone are insane, but that's not new. All the angels are too strong, too fast. She is somehow more than that and he sometimes thinks she's going to split that woman's skin at its seams and burn their eyes from their faces. And she moves like she's afraid of that, too, each movement planned and executed with precision. Not like a ballerina but like a machine. He snorts at his image of her as the Terminator of heaven.

 

Where she walks, all is fire and screams. Demons fall at a glance, at a word. The brothers stare, one with fear and one with understanding.

“How...” the question hangs and she knows that look, the one that proceeds both worship and murder. They wait for her answer to decide which to pursue. She turns away instead of giving them satisfaction. She cannot reveal her secrets, for they are not fully hers.

_Read your books_ , she says, a compromise she would not have made before. Her heels ring out again as she walks away into the air.

 

Sam researches; Dean paces. He's drawing stares at the tiny burger place they're at, but he doesn't care. There's too much anger to sit still. He listens to Sam read passages out in between tapping on his laptop: “serves the will of God 'with the most profound reverence'...said to command legions of other angels...there's the whole death thing, although maybe it's more judgment than reaping...covered in eyes and tongues, one for each person on earth...” Dean stops pacing long enough to make a face.

“Eyes and tongues? Why aren't they ever made out of normal things, like two eyes and one tongue and a freakin' heart?” Sam shrugs.

“This says that God created her and was afraid of the power he gave her, so he made all the other angels weaker. Whatever she is, I think she's more than the other angels. ”

“She is.” Crowley is sitting across the table from Sam. They start and Dean finds a convenient new outlet for his anger. He strides towards him, raising a hand that is curling into a fist.

“You!”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Crowley warns, not the least bit put out by Dean's display of machismo. “I've come to help you boys.”

“And why would you do that?” Sam asks with a raised eyebrow.

“And why would we trust you?” Dean still hasn't lowered his fist.

Crowley chooses not to directly answer either of them. “Power like that doesn't walk the earth unnoticed. All of hell is on alert, knowing she's here. She threatens the balance, that...unnatural holiness. Are you going to finish those?” He motions to Dean's fries.

“Yes!” Crowley shrugs and takes a few anyway. Dean rolls his eyes, purses his lips.

“Love these things.”

“So do I.” He looms over Crowley, radiating fury and frustration like heat. The demon looks up at him, unimpressed and disapproving.

“What do you mean, 'unnatural holiness?'” Sam interjects.

“Always been strong, that one. But I've never heard tell of her incinerating a demon just by looking at it. Lesser demons, but still. Didn't pick an ugly vessel, either, did she?” Sam rolls his eyes.

“Looks a lot like Cas, actually.” Dean muses. Crowley smiles then, knowing and smug and Dean itches to punch it right off his face.

“How is she doing it, then?” Sam keeps them on track. Crowley shrugs again.

“Can't say, except that it mean's she's holier than your garden variety angel. She hasn't been seen for centuries, you know. Disappeared right around the same time as the man upstairs. There were rumors the two of them left together.”

“Why? Did she..take him somehow?” Crowley makes a face at Sam, dismissing him as not only wrong but also perhaps mentally deficient.

“Maybe he didn't want to be alone,” Dean thought out loud.

“More likely,” Crowley allowed. “But probably he just had a favorite child. Doesn't every father? I'm sure the two of you know all about that.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Dean muttered, rolling his eyes.

“What?” Sam stared at Dean, his expression incredulous. By the time their argument wound down enough for them to remember the demon in their midst, he was gone.

“Man, he took all my fries!”

 

Where she walks, the air is heavy with tension. He tells her what they found, and between the words he says are the thoughts he won't voice, the demand to prove him wrong. She is silent and he spits words are her, calls her many things—a bodyguard, and a coward and other things aimed to hurt and provoke. Why, his eyes demand, is she whole and found and brimming with power when her little brother lies broken on the bed, not even human and unable to say anything. Why did God play favorites. Why is she chosen. She knows all about metaphors and burdens and resentment and duty, so she allows him his anger, allows him this tirade without interruption. When she does speak, much later, it is with the aim of comfort, although she doesn't know if he takes it as such.

_You are allowed to be happy. Encouraged, even. Happiness is delivered to you on a silver platter, pieced together again and again when your carelessness breaks it. Even now, at Heaven's darkest hour and greatest need. He has sent me away from Him not just to put things in order but explicitly to reward you yet again with love, even as you do nothing to deserve it._

He cannot meet her eyes, turning his head instead to look at the torn wallpaper of the cheap motel, not at her, not at Sam's face where confirmation of a long-held suspicion is dawning and especially not the bed with Castiel's small frame upon it. The moment holds, far too long, and eventually he turns to her again.

_You are allowed to be happy,_ she repeats and he will not believe it.

 

Castiel tells them more than Sam could find in the books. “She was the first angel God created. She is to the archangels what the archangels are to the rest of us. And she is my sister. Out of all the angels in heaven, she is the one I was closest to. She always looked out for me.”

Dean understands, then, and feels himself softening towards her. He gets it, he's lived it, the whole overprotective older sibling thing. He can forgive her and her half-truths and withholding. She was protecting something precious, risking the whole world to save her little brother. He can forgive. He can be merciful.

“Dean.” He turns and Cas is so close, breathing-the-same-air close, and his eyes are earnest and serious and Dean suddenly cannot breathe. “If she has a plan to get into Heaven, to find Metatron, you must trust her. She has been with Father for centuries. Her power must be immense.” Cas's hand is on his shoulder and he can smell that damn trench coat and he nods.

“Yeah, Cas. If you say so, we'll trust her.”

 

Where she walks, it is with bones that cannot hold her power, with skin and muscle that cannot hide her wings, with too few eyes and too much anger. Her vessel nearly breaks apart and he talks her down, brings her back from the edge of holy judgment too great to witness.

The earth is scorched and her kin lay at her feet. The air crackles and her wings have shattered glass. There is no one living but them. She turns to him and she is too close, her eyes lost and the family resemblance is so strong his throat catches.

_I am the last angel in heaven,_ she whispers and it is a genuine whisper, the softest sound she has ever made.

“You are allowed to be sad,” he says. “I know a thing or two about shitty fathers and you are definitely allowed to be sad.” He doesn't know if she believes it.

 

Dean should be glad she just disappears and offers no goodbye. Every angel he's ever met is like that and it doesn't surprise him. What does, though, is the disappointment at her vanishing. They had something, he thinks, some kind of bond that Cas would probably call “more profound.” He asks Cas about it, but the angel is only confused.

“You and I are the only ones who share that, Dean.” He pauses for a moment. “Are you romantically attracted to my sister?”

“What? No! We just, you know. I get her. She gets me. We're older siblings.” Cas accepts this without reservation, the way he accepts everything Dean says to him. “We'll see her again. She never abandons me. If she's left, it's because she knows I will be fine with you.” Cas's conviction is nothing new, nor is the intensity of his gaze as he stands way inside of Dean's personal space. The way his heart skips a beat in the face of both isn't new, either, and Dean is starting to like that feeling.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Name taken from "Lepanto" by GK Chesterton.


End file.
